The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[Nightbreeze]

Yup. That was the worst think that could happen to them: greater dispel.

By the way, Lazybones, this is the first time that you manage to convince me that the party is terribly, horribly screwed (if it wasn't for whatever fate is doing with Alderis).

 

[wolff96]

Nah. Mord's Disjunction would have been worse. No more magic items.

 

[Lazybones]

Yeah, I think Mord's is one of the few powers that Orcus doesn't have. But I have given the Demon access to some powers not expressly described in the module, as you'll see developed over the next few posts.

* * * * *

Chapter 358

ORCUS STIRS


As soon as she felt Orcus’s power wash over her, collapsing the defensive barriers that held his undead forces at bay, Allera knew that it was time to act. She saw Dar meeting the charge of ghouls and ghasts, slicing down one, two, and then a third with Beatus Incendia before the others swarmed upon him, almost dragging him down through sheer numbers. Letellia shouted something, but she couldn’t hear it over the violent noises of the onrushing charge, overlaid with the ongoing noises of suffering that rose from Orcus’s throne. She could see the marilith, rising up behind the farthest rank of undead, her swords lifted high like the petals of a flower.

She held her power, but waited another second, two, even as Dar fought for his life, and a ghast sprang upon Varo, and at least a dozen claws extended toward her as the enemy charge swept around Dar and came straight toward her, Letellia, and Alderis. The elf still had not moved from his position, and he continued to stare ahead as though looking at something a thousand leagues away.

Then, finally, she unleashed her mass heal.

The energies of the spell spread outward like an invisible explosion. Blue fire erupted around the bodies of the nearest undead, and then those behind, and onward until every unliving foe within thirty feet of her had been seared by that potent flame. Even shrouded within the presence of Orcus, the undead could not escape the sheer destructive potential of pure positive energy. Allera felt purged as the power coursed through her, restored her, cleansed her spirit.

Varo, waiting for just that moment, followed her spell with a flame strike that descended onto the ground directly in front of them. The spell cleansed the space of undead, blasting the ravaged creatures into fine dust. It engulfed Dar as well, but the fighter, protected to some degree by his armor, weathered it far better than his foes.

Only a handful of undead remained, those in close quarters with the spellcasters, and thus not caught within the flame strike, and a few zombies that had been too slow in their charge to reach the radius of the blast. That number declined further as Letellia blasted three critically weakened wraiths and two spectres with magic missiles, dissolving all five of them.

“We’ll defeat anything you can throw at us, goat-face!” Dar shouted, cutting apart a wraith that had evaded the flame strike. The other wraith had been consumed by the flames, and there was nothing left of the huge mass of ghouls, ghasts, and skeletons that had mobbed him except for gray dust.

But Dar found a more immediate threat to deal with first, as the marilith slid forward to meet him in battle.

“Now?” Allera said to Varo.

“Not yet,” the cleric replied. He tossed his wand aside, its power depleted and useless. Two shadows, their black forms rent by healing power, hovered around him, unable to affect him through his death ward. He ignored them, and said to her, “Be ready.”

Dar stepped forward boldly to engage the six-armed demon. Each was wary of the other, having just witnessed the destructive potential each possessed in the last battle in the outer chamber. The marilith had the advantage in strength, speed, reach, and sheer number of attacks, but Dar had Beatus Incendia, and a determination that could not be reduced to easily quantifiable terms.

Once again the demon’s swords lashed out as the human entered its reach, and once again Dar took the hits and stepped up close to deliver his own assault. Bright red blood and black ichor alike flew through the air, each spraying the other with their own fluids as their blades carved through armor and flesh and bit deep into the bodies beneath.

After that first full exchange of attacks, the marilith started to turn away, sagging as ichor continued to trail down its body. One of its arms hung limply at its side, and a deep gash ran down from one breast to where its hip would have been, had it been a mortal woman.

As he had with the first one, Dar stepped in to finish it. But even as he lifted Beatus Incendia, the marilith’s tail lashed around, the turning of its body allowing it to lash the long appendage up and around like the head of a whip. Dar turned, but just a fraction too slow. The tail smashed down hard across his back, staggering him, and it curled around his torso, tightening like the closing of a fist around the hilt of a sword. Before he could effectively react, the demon reversed its turn, twining more of itself around him, crushing his left arm against his body, and squeezing his torso hard enough to crack his ribs even within his armor. Dar cried out as he was lifted off his feet, firmly imprisoned within the demon’s deadly coils. He still held Beatus Incendia in his right hand, but the demon remained out of reach, and in his current position he could not get an effective angle to hew at the parts of it that held him secure.

Allera and Letellia tried to come to his aid. The sorceress struck the marilith with the pale green beam of a disintegrate spell, but the demon’s resistances far outpowered Letellia’s strength, and the ray dissipated without effect as it struck her. Allera was torn between Varo’s mandate and fear for her lover, and as the demon tightened its grasp, it was not clear in any case what healing alone would do here, except to postpone the demon’s victory.

Before she could make her decision, a loud noise drew her attention around. The throne’s protests rose to a crescendo, and bones cracked and shifted as Orcus lifted himself to its feet. The demon seemed to rise up above them like a titan as it stood, the power washing off of it disproportionate to even its considerable size.

Orcus said nothing, but Allera could feel the pressure of its stare, could feel the sheer malevolence in that gaze. Its intent was instantly clear, as it lifted its dread wand and strode forward to deal with them itself.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 359

DESTINY


Dar thought that the marilith’s swords had hurt, but the burning pain of the gashes in his thigh, forearm, side, neck, and shoulder paled before the crushing grip of its coils as they tightened around his body. He could not even manage the breath for a cry of pain as his left arm gave with a nasty pop, and he could almost feel his ribs bending toward the point where they would snap en masse, crushing everything they protected.

He looked up at the demon, which seemed amused at his predicament. He knew he could try to cut at the coils that held it, but without leverage or position, he doubted that he could do more than scratch it. He also knew that in a few seconds it would be moot, as he would lose consciousness.

So with limited options, he lifted his arm and hurled Beatus Incendia directly into the demon’s face.

That clearly caught the marilith off guard; it reared back and brought up a pair of swords to deflect the missile, but Dar had been too close, and the holy sword slammed hard into its chest just above its left breast. The demon shrieked and fell, slamming Dar to the ground as its long body twisted and flexed violently. The fighter, as battered as its foe, was punished further as the marilith’s struggles intensified. Its screams sounded painfully, accompanied by metallic scraping and clattering as its swords skittered across the floor, the weapons now forgotten in its suffering.

Orcus’s approach took it within five paces of the crippled demon. As it passed, the Prince looked down at its handmaiden, and spoke a word of power. The demon’s noises and struggles ceased at once, and it crumpled, instantly dead. Orcus held its dread wand over its supine form, and they could see tendrils of black substance rise up from the marilith, through the wand, and into the body of the demon lord. The demon sucked in a deep, greedy breath and trembled slightly as it absorbed the stolen potency of that last fleeting vestige of life.

Then it turned to the companions. It ignored Dar, still struggling in the now-loose folds of the marilith’s body. As it approached the spellcasters, it seemed to swell ever-larger in their perceptions, until it seemed to almost scrape the ceiling high above. It was an optical illusion, but there was nothing illusory about the power wielded by this monstrous being.

“VARO!” Allera hissed.

And then Orcus was right there, and there was no time for anything as the demon prince lifted its wand, and a black fire exploded around the head of the artifact.

EMBRACE DEATH, MORTALS.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Dar, staggering to his feet, Beatus Incendia hissing as its flames burned off the demonic ichor covering the blade, screamed something that was lost in the chaos. Allera tried to summon her power, but the energies flickered and twisted in her grasp, as though the magic had been placed behind a curtain that she could not quite penetrate. Varo just stood there. Letellia screamed and clutched her head with her hands.

And Alderis. The mad elf of Rappan Athuk, Malerase, Elegion Alderis, Archmage of the Elven Conclave of Aelvenmarr, he was the only one who seemed able to react as the Wand of Orcus swept down toward them. The elf’s scream was one of madness, but also held rage, and frustration, and loss, all bound together as one as he sprang forward, arms outstretched. The pathetic remnants of his robe gave way, parting to reveal the huge crystalline mass that clung to his chest, extending from his neck to his arms, and down to his hips.

As the artifact struck him, a note like the shattering of a thousand windows pierced the chamber. And then, chaos chased darkness into a chasm of utter oblivion.

 

[Neverwinter Knight]

Awesome, Lazybones! I can't believe that I will have to wait until Friday night to continue with the story (no access during the week)... I can't wait to find out what you had planned for Alderis!

 

[3V1L_N3CR0]

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggg

Another Friday cliffhanger???..... NO!!! Need to know what happens... oh wait I have ADD. Hello Shackled City reread.............. Is it Monday yet? lol



just kidding LB without the cliffhangers it just wouldn't fell right

 

[Lazybones]

Glad you're enjoying the cliffhangers! We may have a few more in store...

I'm traveling to a conference this week, and will be away from my computer on Wednesday through Friday. I'll bring the story on my flash drive, and if I'm near a computer with Internet access I'll post, but no promises. Actually checking the chapters lined up for this week it works with either a Wednesday or Friday cliffhanger, so either way I figure I'm covered.

LB


* * * * *

Chapter 360

AN ACE IN THE HOLE


Allera stirred.

Consciousness returned like the light of the sun, glimpsed through a dense bank of morning fog. It flittered for a moment, drifting in that gap between nothingness and awareness before it finally took hold, and she woke fully. But awareness was accompanied by pain, and she groaned. She shifted, and bones crunched beneath her weight. Memory came a few heartbeats later. She tried to get up, but her body remained weak, and she only managed to paw at the floor. Her muscles were unwilling to fully bow to her commands as of yet. An urgency she couldn’t quite define pressed at her, but it alone wasn’t enough to dissolve the lingering fog of confusion that filled her mind.

Magic. She had magic. She stopped and forced herself to take a deep breath, to gather herself. The fog clouding her thoughts cleared slightly, and she drew upon her power, casting her last mass cure serious wounds spell.

The blue glow filled her, steadying her. But even more reassuring were the faint presences she felt around her, the familiar signatures that comprised the life-energies of her companions. It was almost reflex now, the way she cast out and directed the power of her spell into those distant pinpricks of light within the darkness. She could not see them, but she did not need her vision to recognize them, as they drank up the flows of positive energy she released and controlled. Dar. Letellia. Varo.

But there was one that was missing.

Alderis...

She was now able to move, and while her arms and legs still felt wobbly, she was able to get them under her enough to lift her up into a sitting position.

She almost wished she hadn’t.

She was lying on the floor of the great vault of bones. She blinked, uncertain for a moment. The hulking throne of Orcus was farther away than it had been a few moments before. Before Alderis had thrown himself at Orcus, intercepting the power that the demon had prepared to unleash upon them. She saw, off to her left, indistinct lumps that had to be Varo and Letellia. She knew they still lived, but other than that, could not determine their status in more detail. There was no sign of Dar, but she recognized the collapsed form of the marilith. Its body... glistened, and Allera realized that there was a faint, sparkling glow over everything. She glanced down, and saw tiny bits of crystal embedded in her skin, flickering slightly as they caught the faint light of their dropped torches.

But all of that was trivial to what rested between her and the throne. For a moment, a wild, insane moment, she thought that it was dead, a small mountain lying not far from the sinuous corpse of the marilith. But then she realized that Orcus was already stirring, its head coming up over the bloated ridge of its protruding gut as it pulled itself up to a sitting position, facing her across that black, empty gap where Alderis had sacrificed himself. Its eyes burned with an unholy fire, and Allera heard a moan dragged from her lips as the power and fury in that stare transfixed her.

She gained a respite of a moment as the demon shifted its eyes to its right hand. Or rather, what was left of it. The muscled fist that had held the Wand of Orcus was now just a blackened, ruined stump, equipped with a few protruding bones and the ruins of what had once been a thumb and finger dangling beneath. Of the artifact, there was nothing, not even a shard of bone or a fragment of black stone to indicate that it had ever existed at all.

The demon’s roar shook the chamber, and Allera found herself screaming, as though that could somehow counter the relentless assault upon her senses. For a moment she thought that the ceiling was going to collapse and bury them all; shards of bone drifted down from above and from the walls, and clouds of bone dust rose from the floor. And then she saw the massive hulk rising up off the ground, the twin points of red fire blazing within the half-light. Orcus was still a bit unsteady, weakened by the destruction of its signature artifact, but the demon lord was far better off than any of them.

“Corath!”

Her cry was lost within the noise filling her head; she could not tell how much was real noise, and how much was just the pounding echo of the power surging off of the enraged demon. Impelled to action, she pulled herself to her feet, but her legs wobbled under her, and it was all she could do not to fall.

Orcus reached back, and extended its good hand toward its throne. Bones creaked and shifted in protest, and as Allera watched the entire right side of the unholy construction tore open, vomiting a black shape that shot out into the demon lord’s waiting palm. As it turned back, the healer saw that it was a sword, an obviously magical weapon with a dark blade. Thin tendrils of black smoke trailed through the air in its wake, coiling up around the demon’s wrist and forearm like insubstantial serpents. The sword was not much larger than Valor had been, but it looked tiny in the demon’s huge fist. The noises of torment that had come from the throne from the moment of Orcus’s appearance abruptly ended.

If Orcus was discomfited by the loss of its hand, it did not show it in any way that Allera could discern. Its earlier weakness was passing, as fresh power crept into the void left by the backlash from the Wand’s destruction. The demon’s rage rolled off it like the heat of a bonfire. A black aura had surged up around it, its edges flaring out like a cloak caught in the wind. Allera could not identify its nature, but even fifty feet away she could put a name to it: Death.

“Allera!”

The sound of her name penetrated the violent storm inside her skull, and she turned to see Varo, conscious now, bent over on his hands and knees. His black helmet had fallen free, and his skin was a stark white, almost as pale as the bones shattered under his knees. Blood trickled down from the corner of his left eye, trailing a slash of crimson down the side of his face. For once, his iron self-control seemed to have cracked, and there was something almost akin madness in his stare as he caught her eyes.

“Now! Allera, do it now!”

Allera’s body shook, whether from the aftereffects of being smashed back by the destruction of the Wand, or the power surging from Orcus, or just from sheer exhaustion and strain, it did not matter. She felt like a prisoner that had been kept awake for days as torment. She wanted to sleep, to surrender, to let the blackness that was crashing against her slender thread of consciousness to claim her. But she also knew that this was the moment to which all of this had been building, ever since she had first accompanied Talen Karedes down the Well into the bowels of Rappan Athuk.

Opening her arms and her mind, Allera drank in all of the power that she could reach. For a moment, her skin blazed with a white glow as positive energy suffused her. In that moment, she was more alive than any mortal had ever been.

And then, she opened the gate.

It started as a tear in the very nature of reality, a vertical white slash that ripped outward, forming an opening that swelled into the shape of a perfect disk, hovering in mid-air before her. Through it, she could see Orcus, but at the same time, she also saw through into another reality, one so poignant and alien that she felt a sudden stab of feeling that cut through the despair all around her like a knife. In that brief, passing instant, she understood things that she had never even conceived of in her life.

But then Orcus lifted his ruined hand. YOUR GODS WILL NOT SAVE YOU, NOT HERE. THIS PLACE IS MINE! The demon lord made a motion with its stump like the slashing of a blade, and the gate collapsed, crumpling in upon itself like a parchment scroll tossed into a roaring flame.

 

[Nightbreeze]

Oopsie.

 

[Cerulean_Wings]

I've caught up to the last page

Lazybones, pure gold, I'm telling ya, your story hour is pure gold. Of the 3 sacrifices, it was the one from Dar that I could guess, the other two surprised me by a mile. Well done

My thoughts upon reading the last 20 chapters went like this: oh my god-did he actually do that?-holy sweet mother of Pelor-what the-he's back?!-not Maphistal again!-Dar lost that?!-sweet Pelor, they're goners...

Quite intense business, the Dungeon of Graves.

 

[Lazybones]

Thanks, Cerulean_Wings!

When I was approaching the last part of the story, I wondered if the final confrontation would live up to the buildup. The module doesn't provide much guidance except for, "Here's Orcus and a bunch of undead: go kill some PCs." I'm pretty happy with how the story turned out; I hope that you all enjoy it.

I'll post another update before I leave tomorrow.

* * * * *

Chapter 361

VARO


Varo stopped time.

As Allera had opened her gate, Varo had drawn upon his own power, the raw and powerful energies of his patron god. The spell was the most powerful he had ever cast, granted to him only that morning, a power that Varo could not have imagined in the hands of a mere mortal even weeks before. With that power, he could do almost anything, but he had kept that potential close within, had not shared anything of it with his companions, for fear that Orcus would divine his intent.

But now, as the demon almost casually disrupted Allera’s spell, a magic of equal potency to his own newfound power, he felt overwhelmed by doubt.

Within the time stop, everything around him took on an indistinct, almost surreal quality. The visual traces that surrounded magical auras in this place filled the air with subtle streaks in dozens of colors, bright around the companions, dark around Orcus and its minions. He saw a pair of zombies that he hadn’t noticed earlier, frozen as they lunged toward Letellia, who was herself locked into immobility in the midst of dragging herself up to her knees. Allera’s face was frozen in a look of horror behind her collapsing gate, now just a bright circle barely two feet across. It was continuing to shrink even now, closing slowly despite his spell, and Varo knew that he only had a few moments to act.

The cleric half walked, half stumbled toward the gate. He spared only a glance for Orcus, enough to see that the demon was moving too, slowly, ever so slowly, but coming right for them. He thought he could feel an awareness in that ruby stare, that a part of the demon was aware of him even within the bubble of accelerated time. Varo could believe it, from the power he had witnessed already within this chamber.

Seconds, precious seconds of relative time. Too long... and then he was there. The gate was only a foot across, now. It would collapse the moment the time stop ended. Varo did not hesitate, extending his hand and his awareness toward the remnants of the planar portal.

Instantly, he could feel the barrier that Orcus had described, the blockage that had defeated Allera’s attempt to bring divine aid to their cause. It was more than the demon’s will, although that was a part of it, a thick, cloying film that held him at bay. This place, all of it, was part of it as well, the chaos of this constructed reality an unbreakable obstacle. Their plan had been foolish, a mad dream. In a few seconds, Orcus would destroy them all, and the last hindrance to its plans for Camar would come to an end.

And then, he remembered the words of the Serah-apparition, in the alternate reality that had been the gateway to this place.

Certainty.

Doubt.

Truth.

And a word he had used often, himself, come back to him. Faith.

There was no time for hesitation. The cleric drew out his other hand, clutching the bag that had pressed against his chest, under his armor. He stabbed it at the gate, at the barrier, and as it hit Varo drew upon the last of his power, and summoned a miracle.

Magic coursed through him. As his hand touched the barrier, the spell shattered the seven crystals, the Tears of the Gods, that he had won at high cost from the tomb of Amar-Sina. Each crystal held divine potency that Varo had painstakingly infused into them, stored spell power that now joined with his own divine magic to smash into the barrier, through it, breaking the unbreakable with the force of a sledgehammer. Almost at once there was a backblast through the portal, and Varo felt the same sudden intensity that had almost overcome Allera a moment ago. His hand passed through the closing gate into the space beyond, unlocking the opening between this realm, his consciousness straddling the space between this place, and the one beyond.

In the same instant, Varo realized two things. The first was that Orcus had been right about one thing; while he had forced his way through the gate, nothing beyond could use that breach to come through. The plan he had suggested to Allera would not work; no god would step through to fight their fight for them.

The second realization was the truth, the truth, of what Serah—or whoever, whatever she had been—had been trying to tell him.

Time returned to its normal rate as Varo’s time stop spell ended, and the cacophony of chaos and activity resumed around him. Varo stood there transfixed, his arm vanishing at the elbow, caught within a ring of white fire that raged against a gathering blackness that stormed in from all directions. The tear in realities did not close completely, but the powers of this place were actively fighting him, threatening to tear both him and the gateway apart. Tears streamed down the cleric’s eyes, and agony twisted his face as he fought to do... something...

Orcus’s burning stare fixed upon the cleric, and some dark realization flared within the demon as well. Orcus hurled magic at Varo, a devastating column of dark energy conjured from the very fabric of this place. The black streamers materializing from the nether almost enveloped the man, and they had an obvious effect, piercing his body like long needles. But Varo did not fall, and within the smothering black the demon could see the white fire through the man, flickering but intact.

The demon lifted its black blade and charged, moving at a blinding pace, the ground shaking with its coming. Varo, caught within a prison of warring powers far greater than his own, could do nothing but stand there, transfixed, as the demon descended upon him, the chamber of bones trembling with the force of its coming.